DATA Network Sui Migration: $30M Deal Retires Its Own Chain

DATA Network is giving up its own blockchain. Sui Foundation and DATA Foundation announced on October 12 that the AI training data project will move onto Sui. Sui Foundation is putting in $30 million. The DATA Network Sui migration also makes Walrus the default storage layer for DATA Foundation's apps.

Until the upgrade is done, the existing chain keeps running. Both sides say a detailed timeline and a plan for token holders will come out before it happens.

What the DATA Network Sui migration covers

The pitch is provenance. The Sui post says the open internet has been scraped. It adds that the EU AI Act and training data litigation have made proof of origin a buying requirement for AI labs. Trace is meant to supply that proof.

DATA Network was known as Story until DATA Foundation rebranded it in June. Its Trace registry, launched the same month, records where each piece of AI training data came from and what rights come with it. It also pays the person who contributed the data.

Sui's own announcement puts Trace at more than 250 million registered contributions and about 3 million receipts a day. Cointelegraph, quoting a DATA Foundation spokesperson, reported a higher count of more than 270 million. Apps that write to Trace include Kled, Numo and Oto.

The Sui Foundation announcement opens with three takeaways. Trace joins the Sui stack, Walrus becomes the data layer, and AI labs get one place to source cleared data.

Walrus is meant to add a second layer. Today a Trace record shows that a file was registered and when. With Walrus, Trace could also hold an encrypted, unchangeable copy of the file. The record's hash can then be rebuilt from the data, and later processing can be checked against the original.

Further down the same Sui post sit the $30 million investment and the plan to retire the independent chain. The promise to protect holders' economics and governance rights is there too.

The $30 million makes Sui Foundation the largest institutional holder of the network, next to PIP Labs and DATA Foundation. SY Lee, who chairs Poseidon and runs PIP Labs, joins Sui Foundation as a strategic advisor.

What happens to the DATA token

The announcement says the DATA token carries over one to one as the token of a protocol running on Sui. Holder economics and governance rights are to be at least equivalent to today. Locked and vesting positions carry over unchanged.

No migration date is given. The DATA Foundation spokesperson told Cointelegraph that running a dedicated chain for one use meant paying for validators, security and infrastructure. In their words, rebuilding storage and access control would have duplicated what Sui already has in Walrus and Seal.

CoinGecko lists the DATA token at about $0.216 on the morning of October 12. That is up 11.4% over 24 hours, with a market value near $77.6 million. Its hourly series sat between roughly $0.193 and $0.198 across October 10 and 11. The price data does not say why the token moved, and neither party's announcement mentions price.

Sui's own post says the DATA Network Sui migration brings it a flagship supply of cleared training data. Walrus becomes the default storage layer for the foundation's apps. The details of the token transition are still to come. This is a summary of announcements and not investment advice.